About the author

As a freelance journalist, Anouk (26) usually writes about what other people do or like. In her precious spare time she watches arthouse films. Not a few. A lot, thanks to her trusted Cineville pass. Here she can finally share her film-fetish with the world.

To watch or not to watch? I will tour around Amsterdam’s cinemas and answer this crucial question every Friday. Without mercy, of course. Sucky films will be slaughtered, cinematographic pearls will be appreciated as such. Or the other way around. After all, good taste is in the eye of the beholder.

Holy Motors

I had three opportunities to see this film and I’ve missed them all. Damn it. I’m reading in the papers that this is an amazing piece of work by ‘arty-farty’ director Leos Carax. It is his first feature film since 13 years and he is using ‘his’ actor Denis Lavant again. Lavant can go all the way in Holy Motors, in which he plays Monsieur Oscar. He drives through Paris in a limo, and each time he gets out of the car he is a different character again: hobo, hitman, father and more. Carax doesn’t explain much about his films, but in Cannes he said that he’s afraid of the virtual world that’s replacing real experiences with fake ones. Prepare for an hallucinating trip!

Les Infidèles

The French smell money in humour. Intouchables was a great success, so now French comedies flood the Dutch cinemas. But not all the comedies are that funny, Les Infidèles for example. The film tells seven short stories about adultery. Actors Jean Dujardin (The Artist) and Gilles Lellouche play in all the stories and they asked seven different directors. Sounds like a nice idea, but the result is pretty dull. The film doesn’t rises above the well-known clichés about sexist French men and their ‘love’ for women. The only good part is directed by Michel Hazanavicius (director The Artist). In this story we feel sympathy for a guy that tries to commit adultery at a boring work congress. Other than that, Les Infidèles isn’t really working.

Girl Model

I know, this one’s been showing for a while now. Only this week I got the chance to see the documentary by David Redmon. He shows the unglamorous world of model scouting in Siberia. We meet Ashley, a scouter for the Japanese market who searches the most remote territories for young girls. Hundreds of Siberian girls, we see in the opening shot. All skinny, beautiful, very young and hoping for their big break. Being 13 is no exception. Ashley used to be a model herself, but she hated it. In interviews and in her private footage we get to know her a little bit better. Conclusion: she seems pretty crazy. And that’s worrying, because she has to take care of the young girls when they arrive in Japan. One of them is Nadya, a 13-year old girl from a small village in Russia. She doesn’t speak any English and is ‘dropped’ in Tokyo in a very small room. The agency promised her 8000 dollar and at least two modelling jobs. Of course, things turn out very differently.

It’s too bad that we don’t get a sense about how typical Nadya’s story is. You would like to know more about the scale and how this relates to the ‘normal’ fashion world. Redmon left some gaps open. Hopefully he or someone else will fill them up one day.